Book Description

In A People and a Nation, the authors, most of whom are themselves Métis, offer readers a set of lenses through which to consider the complexity of historical and contemporary Métis nationhood and peoplehood. The field of Métis Studies has been afflicted by a longstanding tendency to situate Métis within deeply racialized contexts, and/or by an overwhelming focus on the nineteenth century. This volume challenges the pervasive racialization of Métis studies with multidisciplinary chapters on identity, history, politics, literature, spirituality, religion, and kinship networks, reorienting the conversation toward Métis experiences today. In the process, this timely collection dismantles the narrow notions that continue to shape political, legal, and social understanding of Métis existence, and convincingly demonstrates a more robust approach to Métis studies that centres Métis peoplehood and nationhood.

About the Author

Jennifer Adese (otipemisiwak/Métis) is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She is co-editor, with Robert Alexander Innes, of Indigenous Celebrity: Indigenous Entanglements with Fame. Her work has appeared in Studies in American Indian Literature (SAIL), American Indian Quarterly (AIQ), Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society (DIES), MediaTropes, TOPIA, PUBLIC - ART, CULTURE, IDEAS, along with a number of edited collections. Chris Andersen (Métis) is the dean of the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. He is the author of the award-winning “Métis”: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood, and, with Maggie Walter, co-author of Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Indigenous Methodology. He co-edited, with Jean O’Brien, Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies

Contributors: Paul L. Gareau, Adam Gaudry, Robert L.A. Hancock, Robert Alexander Innes, June Scudeler, Jesse Thistle, and Daniel Voth